


Miraculous

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Disabled Character, Eloping, Fluff, Holiday Fic Exchange, M/M, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 19:45:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5261243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, mutant rights activists Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier were so bitterly opposed they refused to be in the same room with each other. </p>
<p>Tonight, they're running off to get married.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miraculous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pocky_slash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/gifts).



> Just a short holiday happy! 
> 
> **

 

 

 

The train only stopped at Chester when passengers specifically requested it, so Erik made certain to speak with the conductor.

"Heavy snow up that way," the conductor warned. "We might have some delays."

"We'll be all right," Erik replied. He could, if it came to it, set off microvibrations along the length of the tracks, providing enough heat to melt the snow. Of course, he could also simply have picked up the train and allowed it to float toward their destination, suspended in mid-air. But that would be showing off.

"Besides," Charles said once Erik had returned to their shared cabin, "I don't mind taking our time. It's romantic, don't you think? Traveling by rail."

"Absolutely." Erik would have found even a Greyhound bus romantic if Charles were riding alongside him—particularly now.

It wasn't every day you ran off to get married.

Oh, they'd catch hell about this when they returned to the mansion. Raven would demand to know why she hadn't been invited, and would tell them all about the lavish ceremony and reception she would have delighted in arranging. The others would be calmer, but Hank, Alex, Angel— _everyone_ would ask why they hadn't issued invitations, booked a reception venue and in every other way gotten married like normal people.

But Erik and Charles' romance had caused enough of a ruckus already. Although it now seemed completely natural to Erik—even inevitable—that the world's leading moderate mutant leader and the world's leading radical mutant leader would fall in love, to the rest of the globe's population this had come as a something of a surprise. During the past three years, he and Charles had had to endure endless questions from reporters who ought to have been writing more serious stories about mutant rights. Tabloids sometimes cooked up pretend breakups or scandal between them. A year and a half ago, to Erik's dismay and Charles' amusement, Fox had even aired a sitcom with a premise so obviously based on their lives that they might as well have left the names the same. (Mercifully, the sitcom had been poorly reviewed, and scheduled opposite "Scandal," which meant it was canceled after only five episodes.)

So announcing a wedding would've meant igniting yet another media firestorm. And, as Charles had said, it would involve waiting. Erik didn't want to wait.

Amtrak provided wheelchair accessible rooms, complete with bunk beds and a private bathroom. Although their ride wouldn't last very long into the night, they had taken this one to make sure Charles would be comfortable throughout. Erik sat in the padded seat that could, by night, become a bed; Charles remained in his chair for now, working hard on his laptop.

"If you grade exams on our honeymoon," Erik said, "it's grounds for divorce."

Charles gave him a mock-glare over the top of his screen. "I'm getting the grading finished _now_ , so I can spend our entire honeymoon making mad love to you."

"That's better."

"…it's miraculous, isn't it?" Charles murmured.

"What? Do you mean Alex actually passed French?"

"No. I mean, yes, he did, barely, but I was talking about us. You and me.' Charles' smile gentled. "Ten years ago, would we ever have seen this coming?"

Ten years ago, they had been writing poison-pen op-eds about each other, Charles decrying Erik's "dangerous rhetoric" while Erik slammed Charles' "ineffectual half-measures." They had even refused to appear on news programs together. Only the UN Conference on the State of Mutants in Global Society had brought them together in the same building.

On day one of the conference, Charles and Erik mostly glowered at one another from afar. On day two, they finally spoke both before and after Dr. Moira MacTaggart's keynote address on mutant genetics. The first conversation was tense; the second congenial, since both of them could be objective and enthusiastic about the science.

And then it had seemed sort of stupid, really, pretending as though they hadn't just had a perfectly nice conversation with each other, so when they turned out to be staying in the same hotel, they had a quick after-dinner cocktail.

Which had turned into two cocktails, and had lasted for nearly three hours.

Day three of the conference had been politically very important, but Erik couldn't remember much about it any longer. The fuse of sexual attraction had been lit, and the awareness that the attraction between them could go far deeper than sex. They'd kept to their own circles for most of the day, yet every time Erik glanced over at Charles, Charles turned out to be glancing at him. Each glance hinted at the impossible…and the irresistible.

By midnight that night, Erik had been in Charles' hotel room, stripping off his clothes and Charles' between feverish kisses and some whispered explanations about what a paraplegic could and couldn't do in bed. What Charles _could_ do turned out to be much, much more important.

They could've restricted themselves to a one-night stand. Yet the morning after, Erik had been unable to leave without arranging another time for them to meet. He'd figured they would have a torrid, clandestine affair, one that would blaze bright and hot before it burned itself out.

Instead, here they were: sharing a home, a bedroom, a mission, and—as soon as the Justice of the Peace said the words—the rest of their lives.

"I don't believe in miracles," Erik said. "We found each other. We made this, together."

Charles took Erik's hand. "I don't think the two are mutually exclusive."

Outside the window, in the twilight darkness, Erik could see the rolling terrain of the Catskills and the softly falling snow. The clicking of the rails was as regular and soothing as the tick-tock of the grandfather clock downstairs at the mansion, and the back-and-forth sway of the train car might have been rocking them to sleep. He felt as though he and Charles were sheltered within a small lantern, warm and shining amid a cold night.

Charles had taught him when to compromise. He had taught Charles when to fight. And together they had learned to see past their arguments and sharp edges to discover each other, and happiness, and joy.

"Maybe I believe in one miracle," Erik said as he lifted his fiancé's hand for a kiss.

Charles smiled gently. "One is enough."


End file.
